Victory Road, Part #3: Battle of Berlin

Only one more puzzle to go. Only two more battles until you reach the outside world again.

The puzzle here is fairly easy to bruteforce, and it only takes maybe five or so minutes to do so.

1. Place a star into the left-most empty slot.
2. Step on the pad to check the combination.
3. If a new indicator on the right lit up, that slot is correct. Otherwise, it is incorrect.

Repeat this seven times until you get the combination, then move up into the final room.

After all that, you'll be face to face with Fern for one final time, one final battle. He's filled with determination!

Walk up and along the final set of stairs, then shimmy across the ledge to face the final spirit. Who else would it be but me? This is, for the most part, my in-game team (with better items) and a Magearna to boot.

After that, you can walk out the south to reach... Charous Mountain's top.

The Final Gauntlet

There's still a few things left to do before you want to face the Elite 4. Return back to the spirit guy at the Victory Road Pokécentre and talk to him to get some battle items. Most of the Victory Road maps have unique encounters, so you can probably get your last Pokédex quest reward if you catch everything exhaustively.

Anyway, the "twist" here is that all of the Elite 4 leaders use dual types instead of single types. They're also all on favourable field effects and have full level 100 teams. Not that it matters because you've already annihilated twenty five spirits with the same gimmick-ish. Whenever you're ready, enter the League building and pass through the eighteen badge gates to progress.

Heather

Here's the four battles of the Elite 4 you'll face. First up is Heather, who is a dual Poison and Flying type trainer. Her battle is on the Mountain Field. Some tips:

• Her Crobat will always get Tailwind up (unless you hit it with, like, a really fast rock blast?) thanks to its Focus Sash. Hit it turn 1 to break the sash, then stall out the tailwind with something like paralysis, sleep, or similar until the final turn (whereupon you should kill it).
• Rock types will get a good boost from the field here, and can take her down nice and easily. Something like Lycanroc is fast and hits hard.
• Her Ho-Oh looks scary, but anything with Rock Slide or Stone Edge will handily kill it. Garchomp Mega-Z even gets priority.
• Her Salamence-M is the hardest hitter here, with 700 BST and an extremely good moveset. Use a Focus Sash with an Ice type to kill it quickly, or Ice Shard on a strong physical attacker like Mamoswine can deal with it.

Bennett and Laura

The second is Bennett & Laura, who fight as a single enemy trainer with 6 Pokémon despite the name. They're dual Bug and Grass type trainers, and this is a double battle. Their battle is on the Flower Field which is extremely advantageous to them, but with the right strategy this is the easiest of the four battles. More tips:

• There's one tactic that just destroys them to a truly comical level: Drought. Anything with Drought (or Prankster Sunny Day) converts the field to a Rainbow Field thanks to the forced rain, which just absolutely annihilates them.
• Mega Arcanine, Mega Torkoal, Ninetales, Mega Charizard -- all are good options.
• Once the Rainbow Field is up, any Fire type move will swiftly dispatch the entire team. Flying types will help too, like Togekiss which is immune to all their Bug attacks.
• I really don't know what they were thinking adding the rain.

Elias

The third is Elias, who is a dual Normal and Dragon type trainer. His battle is on the Holy Field, which means Ghost types are at a disadvantage; keep that one in mind. Even more tips:

• Fighting types. That's a good idea. Dragon doesn't resist Fighting, so a fast Fighting type -- maybe with a Choice Scarf -- just annihilates his entire team. Something like Mienshao.
• His Ditto has a Choice Scarf so it'll always outspeed you. He'll switch it out on a resist, so try and be proactive in switching in. Or Tinkaton in front of a fairy type, so it can't use Gigaton Hammer anymore.
• You can bring your own Dragon types too, which do even more damage. His team isn't really that fast (nor was it originally, either) so you should be able to outspeed him fairly trivially.
• If his Palkia hits an attack, you will die. That is a simple fact. Outspeed it or switch an immunity on one of its attack to deal with it.

Anna

To no surprise at all, the fourth and final Elite 4 member is Anna, who is a dual Fairy and Steel type trainer. She gives you some plot exposition before your fight that explains some background lore which varies depending on route. Even more even more tips:

• She's gone from being a total pushover to a real threat with access to Zacian and Multiscale Lugia.
• Don't let her get Aurora Veil up; use something very fast with a Steel type move to take the Ninetales down.
• Her Zacian is very fucking fast and will kill you very quickly; again, have a fast and strong steel type -- or a bulky steel type, like Melmetal -- to take it out as soon as possible.
• Some Dark attacks get boosted, which deals with her Lugia and her Metagross fairly easily.
• Thankfully, her Gardevoir and Jirachi remain mostly not a threat; take them out with any solid Steel and Dark attack, respectively.

The Champion

Once you've left Anna's room, you can go up the path into the champion room for the first of two battles against Lin. There's actually two versions of this battle because her first team is made up of stolen trophy Pokémon.

If Samson was the one that disappeared:

If Ciel was the one that disappeared:

Lin, Pt 2

After beating her, you will get a small cutscene before you are returned to the Citae Astrae. Follow her up into the Citae Astrae and proceed into the Emerald Tower door to continue. Say all Pokémon here are Dark to proceed; then proceed into the Sapphire Tower and say all Pokémon here are Light. Make sure to heal your team with some Full Restores and the PP Restore berry.

Step into the New World to continue. No matter what route you take, you will always have at least one battle here (although, it will vary depending on if you're on the good route or not). I kinda don't care about rebalancing this.

If you are on the good route, this is your battle:

Otherwise, this is your final main-game battle:

Lin, Pt 3?

The next part of the game varies massively depending on the route:

1. On the bad route (i.e. any route where you did not take ALL the required steps) you will be cast out of the New World with an amibigious ending.
2. On the good route, Anna will intervene and you will partake in the third and final battle with Child Lin.

IT IS OKAY TO LOSE THIS BATTLE!!! If you lose, you will get the same postgame and final game ending as the bad route, but a backup save will be made that lets you go back to before the second Lin Battle.

That means that after beating the bad route's postgame, you can throw at the second battle, go back to the start of the E4, use your Shared Box to load up a team of six legendaries, and wipe her in the third battle to get the good route ending. It is my recommendation that you deliberately LOSE the third battle if this is your first (postgame) playthrough as Anna Smiles doesn't make much sense without beating the game normally.

Regardless of which ending you pick, you'll get a credit roll (press B to skip) and you will wake up back in the Peridot Ward. Congratulations! You beat the game! Or, rather... you beat the first three quarters. Welcome to the postgame!